Street Fighter 4

[Pikachu]

Brian, did you ever play the game with the voices set to English? While it is far from the worst dubbing I've heard, it just doesn't even sound right unless there's Japanese in it. Like, some characters like Guile, Cammy, or Rog should have English voices... but you ever hear the English Sakura? I want to shoot her in the head.

[sumason2]

Yeah, I have all three punches and kicks mapped to a single button, however I lose stability on the controller whenever I try to use the bumpers/triggers... meaning if I switch up my grip at all the controller dips while I try to do my 2xQCF.

but as far as scrubs go I very rarely have to use any buttons other than LP, MP, LK, MK... It's funny, I'm mainly trying to learn the art of bating.

It's really very sad... after every gaming session I have to just pull out my stick and do a couple of painting the fence motions... *tear*

I'll have to come over some time,

[buhwhyen]

I actually switched the voices over to Japanese on the first day. It was after I went to the make food and left the game on the start menu and I had to listen to that fucking song repeat over and over. Its not too bad if you only have to listen to it every now and then. Listen to it over and over in English, it makes me want to shank someone.

I actually rarely noticed the English in game voices compared to the Japanese. Most of the time I could only hear the other player screaming and swearing at me (voice chat) in between tiger shots/uppercuts. And while playing arcade mode, I generally turned down the volume and watched something on my laptop as I played (yes, arcade mode was THAT easy).

EDIT:
Btw. The rankings via PSN network battle show some people are ~4.5 million battle points!? (I may have miscounted the # of 0s) This must include more than just American PS3/failBox right? I'm at 2 fucking k (2000, no homo).

[sumason2]

I've never heard someone swear at me,... Well That's also because I don't have my headset on - It's a blessing. I figure that it would just make me laugh or upset. That poor Sagat player that wouldn't learn to avoid the tick + throw. I think I killed him purely with throws one game, and he kept coming back for more. He must have been swearing at me.

EDIT:
Oh and by the way FA after a throw with ken is escapable by jumping, that or I'm just doing it wrong.

[Pikachu]

It is perfectly escapable. Speaking of Ken, this is how to play Ken:

img7.imageshack.us/img7/1470/kenflow.png

EDIT - I thought you lost your mind there, Brian, but I remembered what you were looking at now. You are seeing the high score for ARCADE MODE. You have to scroll to another list to see BP's. Highest is around 6, maybe 7k atm? I just have 1k because I have been doing challenge mode a lot.

[sumason2]

ROFL at the FSM for Ken.

EDIT:
It's true... I play like that, well I'm a little better I understand Yomi, at least the first level. *wink*.

[Pikachu]

Dude, that's the best way to play Ken. Jump back, hadoken. Did it hit? Yes? Hadoken. Did it hit? No. Did the opponent jump? Yes? Shoryuken. No? Fuck it! Shoryuken! Roll 1d10 every 15 seconds. On a 1, random Air Tatsu. 2-7 Random Shoryuken. 8-10, Random EX Shoryu!

I played a game of Ken vs. Ken. It consisted of me anti-airing the opponent into the corner, where I proceeded to block every single SJSU uppercut and punishing back with combos. F+mk was completely foreign to the guy... didn't know how to deal with it, so lots of free hits, or bait into blocked Shoryukens.

And then I finally played my first game against a Claw player. He actually knew how to poke with a lot of light moves and mediums... that's about it. Didn't cancel into rolling claws or anything, but it seemed like he was more unfamiliar with SF4 than fighters in general. Too bad. Was probably one of the better players I've played in the week that it's been out, and he had to pick the lowest tier guy in the game.

I can't get hate mail for the life of me. I almost want to get an XBox so I can experience the rage. All I get are disconnects after hitting with Dan's Ultra, or Dicktator's j.mpx2 juggles. No hate mail. It feels like it invalidates my immaturity .

[sumason2]

I should hook up my mic to hear people get annoyed.

[Pikachu]

You should. Maybe hook up a camcorder to record the hilarity.

[buhwhyen]

I think its cause a lot of people hate street fighter because in ST all you need to do is fireball trap properly to win. They don't believe this is how a fighting game should be. Therefore they are very annoyed when someone kills them with only fireballs and maybe 1-2 uppercuts/st hks. Particularly Mexicants. Hearing gangster wannabe Mexicants say you muthafucka, i'ma kill you mothafucka. Stop being a lil bitch muthafucka. etc as I perfect them twice in a row.

They do not understand your immaturity.

[Pikachu]

I guess you are right . Anyhow, good games tonight. I need to play against fireball characters to keep M.Bison in shape. Check your texts next time or keep your phone on. My mic doesn't seem to work for anything else besides Rock Band. I'll fix that in the near future, though chatting lags things up a lot for me.

Didn't know how else to communicate I was done for the night other than picking Dan ;D. There were a few things I noticed about the game playing you, but I am gonna save that write up for tomorrow.

[buhwhyen]

Since I am unable to sleep, might as well post stuff? The games tonight were really laggy. Particularly at first when I was playing Sagat, though around the time I switched to Ryu, the lag cleared up a little bit. The voice chat might be a source of lag. Weird though, I had 4 bars of connectivity w/ you, where as normally I play people with 3 and its near lagless. Might be the distance, but that really sucks if it is b/c then I have like...no chance of getting good comp unless I drive to LA. No one decent in SD plays, except like...Viscant, eww. Though I'm not sure whether or not Gene Wong is still in the SD area. Other than those 2, its a lot of Guilty Gear players and or 3rd strike people, who aren't very good. Surprisingly, there's a 3rd strike cab on campus (UCSD) and people actually play there. During one of my 5 hour breaks between classes, I dropped by and saw some people playing so I decided to play a few games. I went 6-0 before I got tired of playing on really really stiff (no homo, is that even possible to interpret as not gay?) comp sticks and left.

I texted you about the voice chat thing. I'm pretty sure its because you (Alvin and Jon) are using the rockband microphone without setting it up. Rockband probably specifically looks for a microphone, where as other games you need to specify an input/output device and enable it in the options menu. If you have a bluetooth device, you need to register it under the blue tooth menu, otherwise go to the accessory settings and go to audio device settings. Here you have the option to select an input (mic) and output (probably default, which is your tv).

What I need to figure out is how to better scale the volume of the incoming voice compared to the game volume (when output volume = tv in the settings menu, works fine with the headset). Haven't really played around with it too much.

SF4 lobbies are 2 players only, yeah?


Random things I noticed during the games.

-Sagat's walking speed is fucking horrific. This is actually not something I just figured out, its been bothering me for a while, and one of the reasons I'm seriously considering making Ryu my main. One really annoying thing is if Bison does scissors (blocked) I CANNOT walk up throw, really annoying. Since LK scissors are +0 on block, Sagat doesn't really have any great options (none that are really safe, anyways).

-headstomp is really aggravatingly good. Ridiculious priority, probably just a mentally retarded lack of hitbox in his legs, that only really really late srk can beat clean, otherwise it trades at best.

-I hate having to guess high or low tiger b/c slide goes under high tiger shot clean.

-I need to tiger knee more.

-Backdashing is the best way to avoid headstomp, but Sagat's backdash moves him back like...not at all. I couldn't get myself to react to headstomps w/ backdash last night, though this seems like the best reaction.

-Devil's reverse goes too high. Wtf it goes way higher than my srk. And has wtf control, you can go hella far in a short amount of time. The followup attack also has decent priority.

-Fuck trying to kara cancel in lag. This lead to many srk's that should have been f+lk -> srk. And/or many random f+lk/f+hks.

-Fuck trying to wake up srk. Reversal or not.

-Fuck trying to do juggle combos. Whiffed a lot of these too, wtf. Holding forward and hitting a button should not be difficult. I only hit 1 combo into ultra (with Sagat).

-Mash FADC b/c I missed a lot of dashes.

-I always hated multi button moves (ultras), I hate them more with lag.

-I hate not being able to piano because I'll get random EX moves.

-Regaining spacing after a tiger uppercut is really annoying. I hate just jumping backwards, but I might try this in the future.


Other random junk.

-Sagat's j.hk sucks anus. This move has like, zero vertical reach. Whiff way way more than it should.

-Sagat's tiger knee is very disgusting when you distance properly, similarly to Cammy's cannon drill in CVS2, mostly unpunishable on block.

-There's also crossup shenanigans you can do with tiger knee where you either cross up or don't right before the other player wakes up. But way too laggy to do this shit last night.

-Sagat's cr.mk has donkey anus range, similar to ST range (bad).

-Ryu has a lot of got damn frame advantage. Did you know f+hp (dash punch) is +0 on block and +4 on hit. +4! And his overhead (f+mp) has +5 on hit??? Btw, there's something wrong with the frame data listed in the prima strategy guide. It lists f+hp as +4 on hit, and cr.mp as 4 frame start up. This means it should be impossible to normally link the two, but I constantly link f+hp, cr.mp (its really easy too). Its actually really retarded to be able to link j.hk, cr.mp, cr.mp, cr.mk, fireball/super.

-Ryu moves too fast. His walk speed/dash is like...3rd strike Ken good (not quite on the dash, but still good).

[sumason2]

OMG, I have a camcorder...

Can you hear what my throws are cooking!

[Pikachu]

When you read the frame data for SF4 in general, the reaction ought to be, "God damn, the designers for this game must love links!" Go check out challenge mode. They really show you how it's possible to do some silly crap. M.Bison, for instance, can opt to combo close Fierce, standing short, and standing roundhouse if he doesn't have charge... and it's not that hard to do.

Totally agree with everything you said about Sagat, though I see less of a problem with it because he does very well just zoning and being a general pain in the ass. I tried the Kara Tiger Uppercut a few times in the game. It's hard not to laugh when it hits.

Yeah, slide going under High Tiger is funny. There's not tons of reaction time for it if you toss a Fierce one, though, because it takes a bit for the slide to actually shrink his hitbox under it, even after startup. Bison's Head Stomp and Devil's Reverse are quite possibly the best I've ever seen them in terms of standalone moves. Against really jumpy scrubs, Head Stomp can score counter hits. Any movement at the right time can throw off Head Stomp because of the way it tracks the opponent.

I missed some Ultra juggles because I hit the input too soon. Bison is so dumb that you're supposed to take your sweet time in letting the opponent fall after j.mpx2.

Wakeup Uppercuts are so weird in SF4. For Ryu, the consensus seems to be that you need to use Fierce to get the kind of invincibility you want for anti-air, and I'd think it's the same for wakeups. Jab DP isn't as cool as it used to be. Oh well, it's not like Ryu's hurting right now.

I originally wasn't going to play Gief this game, but I may reconsider. Jab SPD has so much reach. Even if it doesn't do as much damage, the knockdown it provides is enough for the Communist. 360's are also really easy to do. I tried replicating some scrub methods of play by constantly mashing 360's in the middle of people's pressure strings. With a little bit of thought, I was simply able to trade damage on people who didn't have perfect execution and come out on top. Quite funny. That and Gief has cool BnB combos.

[Pikachu]

Holy fuck. The February tier listings from Tougeki Damashii:

S +

Sagat, Viper, Gouki, Zangief

S

Ryu, Boxer, Rufus, Blanka

A
Chun li, Dictator, Ken, Dhalsim, Abel, Honda, Fuerte

B
Claw, Guile

I knew Viper would move up, but S+? I guess the Japanese have figured out how to deal with her weaknesses, and come up with some really ambiguous crossups on her SJC's. The videos already show it, but I guess they're harder to block than they look.

Blanka is immensely annoying in this game, but I don't get the S rating on this one either. He's got some really strong points, but I honestly know very little of him because there are few Blankas, at least on video.

El Fuerte moving to A class? I'm only mildly surprised. El Fuerte is a character that needs to be messed with and won't be good immediately. Guy was kind of like that in Alpha (though he didn't make it to top).

Vega and Guile at B tier? I know the game is balanced, but this tier list looks too compressed, and it's hard to say how they scale their definitions of tiers. My current guess is that they call it B tier because Vega and Guile are far, far from hopeless.